Six Countries, Four Continents, and the Kindness that Carried Me Home
About 30,000 feet over the District of Columbia, I hit the wall. Not a literal one - I don’t think US border security has reached those heights yet - but a full blown, tears-streaming, snot-bubbling, “why me?” kind of wall. After being thrown around the world like a ball bearing in a pinball machine for 4 days, the emotional whiplash of hearing, yet again, that my plane home would not be able to reach its destination, I felt the hot tears of defeat begin to well. A grown-ass woman having a meltdown somewhere over Virginia airspace was not the look I was hoping to cultivate, but there I was, bawling into my complimentary pretzels, convinced that the cosmos was trying to tell me that this was just not my time to be out in the world - when would I get the darn message?
Getting from Edinburgh to Auckland is already a marathon, even when all the stars are in alignment. 27 hours of airplane food and bodily contortions straight out of the latest Cirque du Soleil are part and parcel of the whole experience (one day I might get that elusive upgrade!!). However, due to geopolitical activity and that wily mistress Papatuanuku, I managed to clock up six countries and four continents in a 6-day quest that frankly made Odysseus look like he just popped out to the shops for a pint of milk.
First stop was Qatar. Or so I thought. Mid-air, news of a bombing shut that plan down and we were rerouted to Istanbul. Silver lining - shiny new passport stamp. Downside - eleven grounded planes’ worth of passengers flooding into one terminal. From there, I was ping-ponged back to London, redirected to Texas (nope, closed due to storms), bounced to Washington Dulles, rerouted again to LA, and finally, FINALLY pointed vaguely in the direction of Auckland.
And yet …
At every low moment, small acts of kindness picked me up, dusted me off, and got me back on the road. The invisible network of human goodness was alive and well, quietly carrying me across four continents and home.
There was:
The amazing staff at Istanbul Airport, calmly shepherding 11 plane loads of sweaty, cranky, confused travellers into hotels within three hours of landing, passing out water bottles and calming frayed tempers.
The Ibis hotel crew, suddenly playing host to a displaced planeload of passengers for the evening, keeping smiles on their dials while all around unraveled.
The wonderful Tegan from Australia. When the hotel ran out of single rooms, she became my room mate for the night. Strangers whose paths will never cross again, for 12 hours we were travel buddies, helping each other through the craziness.
The Qatar staff member in Turkey who translated, wrangled food vouchers, helped us connect flights and generally just kept the juggernaut moving. Just a guy doing his job but under incredibly stressful circumstances and even if one takes the cynical approach that he was hoping for a commendation (which he got), he was an absolute rock!
The absolutely stellar staff at Terminal 2 and 3 Premier Inn who found me sobbing in their reception area. Tired, hot, hungry and confused, they sorted my booking, grabbed me some water and generally just made me feel human again.
The United attendant who hugged me mid-meltdown, then pulled out her personal phone to try and salvage my connections. And let’s not even start on how fantastic United staff were in rerouting us all, staying on long after shifts were finished.
The Kiwi couple behind me in the queue, who offered hugs of genuine joy when we finally crossed paths again in LA.
And finally, the sweetest sound - the first “Kia ora” of the flight crew as I boarded.
Four continents later, I finally stepped off the plane to the karanga drifting along the arrivals gate, and it hit me: global flight networks may falter under geopolitics, storms, and sheer bad luck, but human networks rarely let you down. And in the end, it wasn’t planes that carried me home. It was people.